Churchmen sparked Lisbon's pogrom in 1506

Jews had inhabited Iberia for centuries. By the 1400s, Old Jews were thriving in Portugal’s best trading, commercial and intell­ectual cen­tres. It was only when Spain’s Queen Isabella & King Ferdinand decreed the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, some 100,000 Jews fled to neighbouring Port­ugal.

St. Dominic's Church, Lisbon

facing Rossio Square

Portugal’s King Manuel I came to the throne in 1495 and set about establishing himself as one of the great patrons of the Portuguese Renaissance. However things changed when Manuel begged to marry King Ferdinand’s daught­er. The Spanish monarch would approve, providing Por­tugal expel­led its Jews! In Dec 1496, Manuel promptly complied. He dec­reed that all Jews must convert to Catholicism or leave the count­ry, in order to placate his future in-laws, Spain’s Catholic Mon­ar­chs. 

King Manuel issued two decrees: 

A] in 1496, edict of expul­sion from Portugal (when the lucky Jews escaped to Amsterdam, Germany, Italy, France, Morocco, Constantinople, Brasil and Peru) and 

B] in 1497, the forced conversion edict. The 1497 Edict blocked Port­ug­uese Jews from emigrating and were they too were forcibly converted to Christ­ian­ity. The Portuguese Jews who’d been forcibly baptised in the 1497 mass con­ver­sion were called New Christians or Conversos. 

In the early 1500s, drought and plague swept through Portugal, food prices inevitably soared and the Church accused the Jewish merch­ants. Because Easter and Passover over­lap­ped, the Jews who were preparing Passover foods “caused” the deadly plague and drought.

During the worst of the drought in Ap 1506, the Dominican Convent attracted large crowds who were praying for relief. A light that seemed to be em­an­ating from a crucifix over the chapel altar was de­scribed as a divine sign. One New Christian asked “How can a piece of wood work wonders?” The crowd was enraged, calling his remark blasphemous, and beat him to death. His body was dismembered and burned in the square in front of the Con­vent. His protective brother was similarly killed.

 Contemporary image of the massacres by fire in Lisbon

                  

This began a 4-day massacre and burning of 2,000-4,000 Conversos. Mobs of cit­iz­ens who roamed through Lisbon, killing Jews, were in­cited by Dominican friars. They preached sermons against the Jews, shouting Death to the Jews! and Death to the Heret­ics! Other friars yelled “Destroy this abominable people!” Who did they mean, the old Jews or the New Christians?

Citizens followed the fanatical chur­ch­men through the city streets and soon murdered every New Christ­ian they could find. Their bodies were dragged to the main Rossio Square and burnt in huge bonfires in front of the Domin­ican church. Not even in­fants survived the slaugh­t­er.

The next day, sailors from foreign merchant ships joined the locals in the pogroms, presumably for the purpose of robbery and not because they were angry about true Christianity.

During the massacre, royals, courtiers and aristocrats left town, if they could. The Lisbon massacre had sign­al­led a failure of King Man­uel’s policy of integration. Most of the New Christians, convert­ed to Cathol­ic­ism against their will, had remained Jewish in their homes and souls.

Upon King Manuel's return to Lisbon, he arr­ested the two Dominicans who had led the riot and had them execut­ed, along with 40-50 other conspirators. He then gave consent to all New Christians to leave Portugal, countermanding his 1497 order that forbade Conversos from emigrating. 

Ending the madness, King Manuel gave New Christians a grace period of 30 years, without persecution, to cease all Jewish practices or emigrate. King Manuel also abolished legal discrimin­at­ion against them. After that, the lives and the property of the Con­versos who stayed in Lisbon were never endangered, at least until after his death in 1521. Then the persecutions resumed.

There were 3 main contemporary sources about the pogrom:
1. The massacre sent shockwaves throughout Europe and acc­ounts of it appeared in Portuguese, Jewish, Spanish and German doc­um­ents. An anonymous German, who had been present in Lisbon and witnessed the tragedy, wrote a vivid account that was printed in several German editions: The Massacre of the New Christ­ians of Lisbon, 1506.

2 The Spanish chroniclers Andrés Bernáldez and Alonso de Santa Cruz both devoted a chapter in their works to the 1506 crisis.

3 The New Christian Isaac Ibn Faradj was present in Lisbon during the massacre. He survived and later escaped from Portugal to Otto­man Salonica where he reverted to Judaism. He wrote: ‘It happened on a Christian holiday. It was while the King and the Queen were absent from Lisbon on account of the plague which raged there at that time, that a priest with a cross stood up. Wicked men with him, murderers and scoundrels, they killed more than 1,400 New Christians, and burned their bodies, men and women, pregnant women and children. They burnt them in the streets of the city for three days on end, till the bodies were consumed and became ashes. I stole from the fire one half of the burned head of a dear friend of mine, and I hid it, kept it, brought it to Valona, and buried it in a Jew­ish cemetery. When King Manuel heard of the great wrong done to the Jews he came to Lisbon, and the priest was burnt at the stake and forty murderers hanged”.

A memorial stone was placed in Rossio Square in 2006,  

the exact site where the Jewish bodies were thrown onto bonfires.

A memorial to the victims of the Lisbon Massacre was sponsored by the Jewish community of Portugal, and erected in 2006, the 500th anniversary. A round travertine stone was bisected and a bronze Star of David was shaped into the flat surface. Translated it read: “In memory of the thousands of Jews who were victimised by intolerance and religious fanat­ic­ism, killed in the massacre that started on 19th April 1506, in this Square”. And the base had a Biblical verse.

Modern visitors to this memorial need to reflect about the death and des­truction caused by intolerance. Or perhaps read Paulo Mendes Pinto & Susana Bastos Mateus’ book The Mas­s­acre of the Jews in Lisbon, 2014. Thank you to  Lisbon LPS for the photos.